


you were right about the stars; each one is a setting sun

by majesdane



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-06
Updated: 2009-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:33:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdane/pseuds/majesdane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She doesn't believe that love can wear out, she just wants to keep it all bottled up.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were right about the stars; each one is a setting sun

__  
my left hand will live longer than my right.  
the rivers of my palms tell me so.  
bob hicok, 'other lives and dimensions and finally a love poem'

 

 

They don't talk much, but the silence doesn't bother her.

Lying in Naomi's bed, all the words seem to slip from her mind and tongue anyway; it's easier to talk like this, to run her fingers along Naomi's shoulders, down her arm, across her hip. She puts her hand flat on Naomi's stomach; she can close her eyes, feel Naomi breathing in slow and even, and it's enough, she doesn't need to see her to know that she's there. Constant. She moves, bows her head, presses a kiss to the space where she thinks Naomi's heart is, somewhere below her collarbone and above her breast. Naomi sighs, runs her fingers along Emily's back, writing lines from stories that Emily's never read and never will read.

It's at times like this when she can barely remember what they were like before all this, when it was simply enough to smile at Naomi across the hallway and have Naomi smile back, instead of, at best, scowling at her, at worst, completely ignoring her. She remembers school elections, vodka, falling asleep in Naomi's bed. She remembers the waking up, the sudden emptiness of the bed that snapped her back to reality. She had pressed her face to Naomi's pillow; it was like summer.

Now Naomi's sheets smell like lilacs and it reminds Emily of being at home, where her mum uses the same laundry detergent. She falls asleep every night to the scent of lilacs; she likes that there is no difference between home and Naomi, because it makes the realization that much fuller, as if she had only just realized it now, _Naomi is her home_.

She writes their names on Naomi's stomach with her index finger; she puts them both inside a heart, writes out _emily + naomi_ and likes the way Naomi grins and catches her hand, bringing it to her mouth, kissing the back of it, her palm, her knuckles, the tips of her fingers. There's a kind of feeling that settles over Emily, like this is something permanent, something here to stay. And then Naomi smiles and pulls her in for a proper kiss and the feeling is overwhelming, so strong she is afraid that she will dissolve into molecules in Naomi's arms.

It's only certain times, when she says it, _love_ , whispering it into Naomi's ear before they fall asleep or from across the room, mouthing it when she thinks no one is looking. She doesn't believe that love can wear out, she just wants to keep it all bottled up, to the point where it's too much, too strong, and she has to push Naomi up against the wall and kiss her breathlessly. She thinks, that's what love is, what you show and not what you say.

Naomi, standing in the doorway, watching her leave, hands at her sides (she never waves goodbye, just watches, silently). It's times like this that Emily likes the most; not the leaving, but the knowledge that there will be a time when she'll be coming back. The parting doesn't hurt, but the arriving sometimes does, because it's like a stopwatch, counting down every second, every minute. One kiss: thirty-two seconds less than they had before. It's better to not have and to think of that, than to have and to know that it won't last.

But here, lying in Naomi's bed (though it doesn't always have to be Naomi's bed, sometimes it's the bench in the park, the two of them sitting side-by-side, holding hands, or them lying on the grass looking up at the clouds, trying to name the color of blue that the sky is; it doesn't matter what the moment is, it's always sudden, unexpected), she thinks that this will go on forever. She can kiss Naomi and there's no limit to the amount of times she can do it. She can stroke Naomi's hair, press kisses to her neck, the space below her ear, and it's okay. It's enough.

They don't talk much, Emily thinks, but it's okay. She can read the expressions on Naomi's face, knows exactly what Naomi's saying when she kisses the space between her breasts, when her breath is hot on Emily's neck, and her fingers slide smoothly along her stomach, down the inside of her thigh. Naomi reads her like Braille, her fingers reading all of her untold secrets, finding all the ways to make Emily come undone. And when they fall apart, exhausted, she knows what it means when Naomi threads their fingers together. Emily doesn't believe in words; it's what we do that never lies.

Her left hand will live longer than her right; the rivers of her palm tell her so. It's poetry that she whispers in Naomi's ear, trying to make it meaningful, though Naomi, half asleep, won't understand. It doesn't matter if she does or doesn't; she can press her hand to Naomi's heart and feel it beating. Their hearts can beat together and it's _enough_ to just have this, to not necessarily understand, just to know, somehow, that this is all there is.

Those seconds they lose, the minutes, the hours -- she wants to remember every single moment, every detail, every breath and whisper and the little things that never seem important until they're already lost: the color of Naomi's eyes, how her hair looks in the afternoon sunlight.

They are always going forward, never going back.


End file.
